Avoiding the wet

Following last week’s completely wasted journey to the Talking Newspaper studio, I was obviously a bit more careful this week. I was down to present the Haslemere edition (again).

I should say that I simply write my dates on the kitchen calendar and enter them into our Google calendar (which we both access). When I’ve swapped with someone, there’s no record of it except at the studio, where it is written on the master roster. Needless to say, I checked the master roster last week.

This week I was standing in for another presenter who, for reasons I have completely forgotten (but probably relates to an overseas business trip) wanted to swap…well, not exactly. He couldn’t swap anything so it was more a favour. I didn’t mind.

I turned up and checked the master roster for the umpteenth time to make sure I was supposed to be there before settling down to work.

When my first reader turned up, I was glad to see it was David, a lovely chap who’s read for me many times. He looked at me in surprise, saying he thought the other person was presenting. I explained that I’d been swapped in. David said he was glad because he’d much rather work with me as presenter. Apparently he’d had a falling out with the other one a few years ago and things had never been the same. I told him I was glad I could help.

Charlotte then turned up (another great reader to have on the team) and Anne, who is relatively new and has only read with me once before (I think…there’s so many of them I find it hard to remember).

The recording went very smoothly (having Pete as engineer was a big plus) with only a few fluffs and we were out in record time. This is mainly because the other group finished early, Pete was there early and we were ready to go. We were all very happy.

Out of the studio, we realised it had been raining (it was hail, according to Lyndsay) but was now back to blue skies.

On the way home, I decided to pop into the Nelson Arms for a sneaky pint of TEA. As I sat down with my book and my beer there was a sudden downpour outside. The skies were black (they’d been blue most of the day) and it was difficult to see the other side of the street. I smiled a wry smile and turned my back on the deluge.

When I left the pub, the sun was out again and I had a very pleasurable stroll back to the house. Some days are like that; when the luck is with you it feels very, very good.